Harmonix’s Dan Teasdale, lead designer for Rock Band 3, has moved from the music game maker to developer Twisted Pixel, where he’ll be working on “a ridiculously cool new project.”

Announced via his personal blog, Teasdale said he left Harmonix so he could provide more hands-on time with his creations.

“I want to be able to help drive the vision and direction of a game, but at the same time be hands on and physically implement and iterate on the low level of making games in a more substantial way than time affords me when working as a lead on multi-hundred person titles,” he wrote.

“So, with Rock Band 3 now design complete and on the final path to 0 bugs, GM and distribution, I decided to do that. Today’s my last day in the office at Harmonix. Tomorrow, I hop on a plane and fly down to Austin, TX, where I’ll get ready to start work at Twisted Pixel on a ridiculously cool new project.

“It’s the holy grail of game design positions – I’ll get to contribute and help drive the direction of a well funded and supported new title with a close knit superteam, while at the same time being hands on and able to directly impact all aspects of the game.”

Twisted Pixelrecently announced it helped Turbine out with a console MMO, and Rock Band 3 is out later in the year.

Best of luck to Teasdale, we say.

Dan Teasdale, lead designer on Rock Band 2, has posted some updates for the title over on the US PS Blog.

Due to loads of consumer feedback, a few tweaks have been made to the hammer-ons and pull-offs, along with changes to sorting in Quickplay and, finally, the long awaited addition of SingStar mic support in the US.

Here are the changes, which are heavily needed:

• “Sort by Stars” in Quickplay. If you hit the “Sort” button on the Song Select screen, you’ll come to a brand new sort that orders songs by the star ratings that you’ve achieved on each song. Each star rating gets a category, as well as an “Unplayed” category for songs that don’t have a star rating recorded. Finally, you can record your progress towards gold starring every song in your library!

• Improved “Sort by Stars” fix: Players will not have to beat a previous high score to record a star rating for their songs.

• Chord HOPO improvements: If you’ve played The Beatles: Rock Band, you’ll notice much more robust handling of chord hammer-ons and pull-offs. This patch implements those changes in Rock Band 2 to provide a more natural chord hammer-on/pull-off experience.

• Velocity Sensitivity on Ion Drum Kits: Ion Drum kits now support velocity sensitivity in both drum fills and Drum Freestyle mode.

• Rock Band Network Store Support: When the Rock Band Network goes live, select songs will be available for PlayStation 3 users through a new storefront available in game. Stay tuned for more information closer to the launch of Rock Band Network.

• SingStar Wireless Microphone Support. Rock Band 2 now supports the SingStar Wireless Microphones currently available through Europe. Finally, you can now have a fully wireless Rock Band experience on your PlayStation 3.

Harmonix designer Dan Teasdale’s confirmed on his blog that Lego Rock Band was supposed to be announced at GDC. He’s provided the slides to prove it.

There’s a PDF there of an earlier version of the designer’s GDC session – obviously, it didn’t happen. Looks like Lego Rock Band was planned to be announced prior to this year’s show.

Teasdale’s slides show that the game will hit in 2009.

Told you.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Speaking to Gamespot, Rock Band lead designer Dan Teasdale given some hints at just how much work’s been involved in getting Apple Corp to an announcement stage of the newly confirmed Beatles game. Sounds as though it hasn’t been easy.

“We started the process about 17 months ago, so it’s great to finally talk about it,” he said.

Harmonix PR chap John Drake added: “We’ve been in talks with them for a very, very, long time.

“[Apple Corps CEO] Jeff Jones was saying that they respected and appreciated what Harmonix does creatively for rhythm games… being pioneers in the field, bringing the full band experience, and we, of course, are colossal fans of the Beatles so there’s not too much to think about why it’s a great deal.”

Time isn’t an issue when you’re aiming this high, said Teasdale, who appeared to be “quite pleased” at the signing.

“The Beatles are amazing,” he said. “To make it clear, this isn’t a Rock Band game, this is a new experience for the Beatles. It’s a way to experience the Beatles’ music, it’s a way to bring this to a whole new audience as well as people who are huge fans of the Beatles.

“From our end it’s amazing… The Beatles are the biggest band in the world. They’re music legends, and to be able to bring that experience to everyone is a great honour.”

The game’s out next year. More through the link.